What’s a Scenario

What’s a scenario? Not everybody uses the term “scenario” the same way. In the software industry, there’s three common usages of scenario:

The same as a use case.

A path through a use case.

An instance of a use case.

Usually, the most helpful one is “an instance of a use case.” Why? Because if a scenario is an instance of a use case, then it’s testable with concrete data.

Lessons Learned at Microsoft

At Microsoft, when there’s a customer challenge to solve, it’s common to ask “what’s the scenario?” This simply means, what’s the context or what is the customer trying to accomplish. This could be macro-level, end-to-end scenario, or it could be a micro-level, more fine-grained scenario. Knowing the scenario is key since you can’t evaluate an architecture in a vacuum. Context is everything.